'Look here, uncle. Listen. Mark my words. I have two to say to you, and two only. Good-morning.' Tom hastened from the room, and went down into the shop by the shop-stairs. The cashier of the establishment was opening the safe. 'Mr. Perkins,' said Tom lightly, 'uncle wants change for a ten-pound note, in gold.' 'Certainly, Mr. Tom. With pleasure.' 'Oh!' Tom explained, as though the notion had just struck him, taking the sovereigns, 'the note! I'll bring it down in a jiffy.' 'That's all right, Mr. Tom,' said the cashier, smiling with suave confidence. Tom ran up to his room, passing his uncle on the way. He snatched his hat and stick, and descended rapidly into the street by the house-stairs. He chose this effective and picturesque method of departing for ever from the hearth and home of Mr. Knight. CHAPTER VII CONTAGIOUS 'There's only the one slipper here,' said Aunt Annie, feeling in the embroidered slipper-bag which depended from a glittering brass nail in the recess to the right of the fireplace. And this fireplace was on the ground-floor, and not in Oxford Street. 'I was mending the other this morning,' said Mrs. Knight, springing up with all her excessive stoutness from the easy-chair. 'I left it in my work-basket, I do believe.' 'I'll get it,' said Aunt Annie. 'No, I'll get it,' said Mrs. Knight. So it occurred that Aunt Annie laid the left slipper (sole upwards) in front of the brisk red fire, while Mrs. Knight laid the right one. Then the servant entered the dining-room--a little simple fat thing of sixteen or so, proud of her cap and apron and her black afternoon dress. She was breathing quickly. 'Please'm, Dr. Dancer says he'll come at nine o'clock, or as soon after as makes no matter.' In delivering the message the servant gave a shrewd, comprehending, sympathetic smile, as if to say: 'I am just as excited about your plot as you are.' 'Thank you, Sarah. That will do.' Aunt Annie dismissed her frigidly. 'Yes'm.' Sarah's departing face fell to humility, and it said now: 'I'm sorry I presumed to be as excited about your plot as you are.' The two sisters looked at each other interrogatively, disturbed, alarmed, shocked. 'Can she have been listening at doors?' Aunt Annie inquired in a whisper. Wherever the sisters happened to be, they never discussed Sarah save in a whisper. If they had been in Alaska and Sarah in Timbuctoo, they would have mentioned her name in a whisper, lest she might overhear. And, by the way, Sarah's name was not Sarah, but Susan. It had been altered in deference to a general opinion that it was not nice for a servant to bear the same name as her mistress, and, further, that such an anomaly had a tendency to subvert the social order. 'I don't know,' said Mrs. Knight 'I put her straight about those lumps of sugar.' 'Did you tell her to see to the hot-water bottle?' 'Bless us, no!' Aunt Annie rang the bell.